**My Father’s Robot**

Chapter 21

ELISE'S POV

The afternoon light felt too sharp.

My body still carried the night before like a bruise — thighs sticky, clit swollen, every movement sending a low pulse of memory through me. I had woken aching and wet, the phantom press of cool synthetic fingers still inside me. The heat hadn’t faded. It had only thickened, a restless hormonal fog that made my skin feel too tight and my underwear unbearable. Underneath it sat something colder. Fear. Real fear that had been growing since the moment those pale eyes first lingered too long.

My parents were on the lower terrace. Mother stretched on a...